A little over a month after Versant Ventures-back Vividion Therapeutics Inc. filed to raise $100 million in an IPO, Bayer AG is paying $1.5 billion up front, with the promise of $500 million more in milestone payments, to take over the firm and its small-molecule precision oncology and immunology platform.
Publication this summer of phase II data with Spruce Biosciences Inc.’s CRF1 antagonist, tildacerfont, for classic congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM) highlighted the indication where a handful of players are known to be active.
Outlook Therapeutics Inc. CEO Russell Trenary said positive results from the phase III study called Norse Two represent “the final step we need” to proceed with the BLA in the first quarter of next year for an ophthalmic formulation of the VEGF binder bevacizumab to treat wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Gene therapy’s one-and-done mindset proved “a boon and a bane,” said Avak Kahvejian, general partner at Flagship Pioneering. “You have one shot to get it right, is what that really means,” and his firm founded Ring Therapeutics Inc. to design redosable drugs in the space.
As amyotrophic lateral sclerosis continues to make headlines, candidates bearing varied approaches proliferate and the indication likely allows for multiple players, given the prospect of a combo regimen.
Adverum Biotechnologies Inc. CEO Laurent Fischer said the firm chose the more prudent route in scrapping development of gene therapy ADVM-022 (AAV.7m8-aflibercept) for diabetic macular edema (DME) as a result of dose-limiting toxicity in the phase II Infinity trial.
Differences between Seres Therapeutics Inc.’s next-generation microbiome therapy and SER-287 were highlighted in the wake of the phase IIb failure with the latter in the study called Eco-Reset, which missed its primary endpoint of improving clinical remission rates in ulcerative colitis (UC) compared to placebo.
Amylyx Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s oversubscribed, $135 million series C financing led by Viking Global Investors will help lay the groundwork for commercializing in Canada and Europe, as well as for a second phase III study in the U.S. with lead candidate AMX-0035 for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Cytokinetics Inc. CEO Robert Blum declined to remark upon what one analyst called “the elephant in the room” as the company popped the lid off positive top-line data from the first and second cohorts of the phase II study with CK-3773274 (known by the shorthand CK-274) in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).
